Her Shining Splendor, page 2
The tension that had built between them was too much.
“If I hold ye here longer, ye’ll get no bath,” he warned.
Lenore laughed shakily and spun away from him, to step into her bath as gracefully as a water nymph—only to withdraw her foot hastily. “’Tis too hot!” she protested. “I’ll be red as a lobster if I bathe in this!”
“Then you can help me undress while your bath water cools,” he said, unperturbed. As he spoke he was stripping off his coat. With a lazy smile, he sat down again on the bed to pull off his wide-topped boots.
“I’ll help you off with those,” she offered, making to straddle his long leg in order to tug off his right boot.
“Nay.” He pushed her round white bottom away with a gentle pat on its satin surface! “I’ve no mind to put a boot sole on that! I’ve something else in mind!”
Lenore laughed self-consciously and busied herself with playfully helping him out of his russet trousers. She marveled that it seemed as if Geoffrey had never been gone at all! The years had fallen away and this roof at the Tabard Inn had magically changed into their bedroom in Oxford, where they had undressed each other as eagerly as they now did.
“Oh, Geoffrey!” Leonore’s voice broke, and she swayed against him. He swept her up tightly against his lean, naked body, held her for a moment as if to protect her from harm. Then she felt herself lifted from the floor, and he carried her to the tub and tested her bath with a careful toe.
“About right now, I should say. What think you?”
He lowered her gently into the tub. Her bottom struck the water first—and quivered. Then the soles of her feet were immersed. Then her whole body settled down in the tub, and the water came up around her waist and knees and lapped at the base of her round breasts, giving them the sheen of a seashell.
Geoffrey watched her smiling for a moment, then tossed her a bar of scented soap. Whistling, he strode naked across to the other tub. She watched as he lowered himself, folding up his lean body tightly to accommodate it to the tub. His hard ropy muscles were just as she remembered, that light furring on his broad chest just the same.
She turned her head quickly so that he would not see she had been watching him, for she suddenly felt as shy as a young girl with her first lover. Her cheeks a little redder than even the hot water demanded, she soaped herself and eased down into the water as far as she could. She swept her hair up, coiled it atop her head with a practiced hand, then made a turban of a linen towel to keep her hair dry. Then she bent over and scooped up a handful of the hot water, letting it trickle through her fingers over a white shoulder, rinsing off the soap. And then again. And again.
Geoffrey, watching Lenore luxuriate in the bath, thought her neck was swanlike, her body a miracle, her face the loveliest he had ever seen. The very sight of her spurred him to finish his bath quickly. He rose from the tub with a shake like a big, wet dog. Roughly, he toweled himself dry so that his sinewy muscles gleamed in the candlelight.
The very hairs of his chest and the back of his neck prickled as he looked at Lenore, and his groin gave a sudden lurch as she rose dripping from the metal tub. She stood, letting little silver rivulets of water trickle down into the cleft between her breasts, along her stomach and down her sleek thighs.
She stretched—and Geoffrey was lost. With a low moan, he seized a towel and strode toward her.
“I’ll dry you,” he offered. Lenore watched him through her lashes, as slowly, sensuously, he stroked her with the fresh linen until her skin tingled and glowed pink. She gave a little sigh—it was pure, delicious, torture!
“Stop it,” she told him huskily. “I can’t stand it. Geoffrey, I must be twice dried already!”
He laughed and tossed aside the damp towel, took both her hands and swept her arms up and apart and, taking his time, surveyed the naked length of her. She felt a shiver go through her as those gray eyes traveled up and down.
The smile had left his eyes now to be replaced by something akin to awe. “I was not wrong,” he murmured with heartfelt joy. “How often have I told myself that no one could be so beautiful as I remembered you—but you are even more lovely than I pictured you, Lenore.”
Lenore glowed with pleasure. She tossed off her turban with a careless gesture and let her bright hair cascade down her back. She smiled at him and smoothed gentle fingers against his heartbeat. His big chest muscles contracted suddenly beneath her touch and he looked down at her, his gray eyes dark and deep.
“Lenore...” His voice ended in a kiss as his lips closed over hers, and he folded her in his arms. Dizzy with desire, Lenore hardly knew it when he swept her up and carried her to the big fourposter. Tenderly, he laid her down and lowered his naked body upon her. In the dim light it seemed their discovery of one another had made their bodies shine.
They had no need of words, these reunited lovers. Their endearments were only broken murmurings, but their locked embraces spoke eloquently the timeless language of love. Lenore felt Geoffrey’s hands caressing her and she was glad, glad she had not taken any of the many offers that had come her way, glad she had waited for Geoffrey; enraptured to be back in his arms again.
She ran her hand lightly across his groin and heard his soft groan. She nearly sobbed with happiness as he entered her, moving with authority, yet silkily, expertly, holding her at his ease. Heart to heart, they embraced and tingled and tormented with joy. Deftly he caressed her pliant body, and soft explosions of passion flowered within her on vibrating notes, like music rising to a crescendo. His questing fingers moved down her spine and their tingly feeling rippled along her skin like a scale of music.
Never before had she felt such tigerish power in Geoffrey—as if he would devour her. Never before this controlled violence with which he turned and twisted her slight body to his own. She shared this wild desperation, for she had thought never to feel these sinewy arms about her again, never to feel the leanness of his long body as he possessed her. She had thought never to have her soul bursting with this ecstasy, as fierce as she remembered it. Her every sense shattered like crystal—the sparkling shards left to fall on sand, on silk, on velvet. Within her, the rhythmic throbbing sang and rose in waves to the thunderous, overwhelming, not-to-be-denied finale. Then, together they floated down, their senses whirling slowly back to the soft, gentle caress of their love. Lenore lay quietly beside Geoffrey as he slid away from her and smiled down into her eyes.
“Lenore.”
She looked up dreamily, her head nestled in the crook of his arm.
His voice had a wrench in it. “How long I have wanted you.”
“As I have wanted you, Geoffrey.” Her sigh was deep-drawn, blissful. “And now we need never part.” She pressed closer against him and threw her naked leg lightly across his lean hard-muscled one.
“Don’t talk,” he said huskily, aroused again beyond his senses. He took her again.. . this time the highest heights were scaled, the farthest stars seemed but milestones on their road to ecstasy. Space seemed limitless and time without meaning as they murmured soft, wonderful things to each other in the age-old language of love.
By morning they slept a little, happy and exhausted, and smiling in their sleep at the miracle of belonging wholly to each other again.
Geoffrey was dressing when Lenore awoke. She sat up and leaned on one arm and looked at him as he pulled on his trousers. A thousand things she might have asked him at that moment, but all the intervening years seemed unimportant when she saw his back muscles ripple as he adjusted his russet trousers.
“Come back to bed,” she said, smiling wickedly. He turned and gave her a look of indecision. His gray gaze was speculative. “If I do, I’ll not rise again until time to sup.”
“I care not if you don’t rise till tomorrow morn!”
“I had thought to go out and buy you a fine gown, a plumed hat, a necklace of brilliants,” he demurred.
“That can wait. What need have I of fine gowns?” Lenore threw back the coverlet and opened her arms. Lying there, she had a lustrous seductive beauty that Geoffrey could not resist. Quickly he divested himself of the clothes he had just put on.
“I am yours to command, Mistress,” he said, looking down on her with a smile.
“Then I command you to love me, Geoffrey.”
“I have always loved you,” he said slowly. “Whatever happens, remember that.”
“Be not so serious!” she teased, pulling him down so that the dark, silky dusting of hair along his powerful chest brushed her rosy nipples, causing them to flinch in delight. “We are eternal lovers, like Will Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, save that we will end up well, of course!” She gave a rich low vibrant laugh and pulled his body down to hers.
“If I could but save you from the blows of life,” he murmured. But Lenore hardly heard. She was straining against him, her smooth hips thrusting against his own narrow ones. In a night, in a day, she would make up for all those years apart. She would possess him completely, as her towering passion for him had possessed her mind, her body, her very soul—all those empty years without him.
The Cotswolds, England 1662
Chapter 2
Like a red ball sinking into a sea of misty blue, the sun dipped behind the Cotswold Hills. Candles were being lit in the village of Twainmere as Lorena Frankford, swinging an empty basket, strolled home to the vicarage through the unseasonably warm autumn dusk. Past ancient trees and houses of honey-colored Cotswold stone with low stone walls over which red roses spilled their fragrance, her light step took her.
As she neared the village green, Lorena heard laughter and excited teasing voices egging each other on. She peered forward, and her brilliant sapphire eyes, dramatically fringed by thick dark lashes, sparkled. In the shadow of the big oaks that dotted the green, teenage village maids were playing hide-and-seek with the husky local lads. Full skirts were being lifted, petticoats artfully displayed—and flying ankles and shapely calves too—as giggling girls sped to the shelter of the oaks or ran to crouch in nearby hedges or under yew trees, waiting for some promising lad to find them and steal a kiss—or perhaps a bit more—beneath the sheltering branches.
Pretty and precocious, young Lorena—although she was already late for supper at the vicarage— promptly hung her basket over a nearby branch and joined in the game. Still a child, though tall for her age, Lorena had already been noticed by several of the older boys who had given her long thoughtful looks. It was hard not to notice Lorena. Anyone looking into that appealing heart-shaped face, framed by long thick almost hemp-white blond hair, was instantly struck by her loveliness. Her sheer complexion, with the color coming and going softly in her peach bloom cheeks, the curve of her slender white neck, invited one to touch. Her figure, still slender as a boy’s, gave little hint of the lissome beauty that would one day be hers, but her wide blue eyes held a challenge—some said an invitation—and her smile was reckless. She had the face of an adventuress and everyone in Twainmere predicted that that face would get her into trouble.
Joining heartily in the game, Lorena’s soft mouth curved into swift laughter as Harve Meadows rounded an oak, pounced on saucy Jane Frye and bore her to the ground in a laughing shrieking heap. Lorena’s laughter faded as Jane gave Harve a sudden hard slap and scrambled up, pouting and blushing. Something ... had happened there. What had Harve done to rate a slap?
Now it was Jane’s turn to close her eyes and count while the others hid. Lorena was concentrating on the game, but big Harve was now concentrating on Lorena. Her fair hair, moonlight pale, beckoned to him like a flickering firefly winging through the rapidly deepening dusk. He noted where she was running off to with her light skirts flying. Why, she was going to hide in the hedge beside the cottage in which he lived with his parents—almost against the side window. There was a candle burning in the cottage kitchen, but the side of the house Lorena had chosen for her hiding place was dark.
Moving silently over the soft grass, Harve circled about and stole up behind her quietly. Harve was grinning. He’d had his eye on Lorena for some time. Not yet ripe, but getting there. He saw that Lorena’s slender form was bent over as she peered through the leafy hedge, her full attention centered on the wild activity taking place on the green. Her saucy little bottom was turned in his direction, almost quivering as she gauged whether the hunt was coming here. For a moment Harve stood appreciating the sight of that slightly wriggling mound of gray cambric—for as the vicar’s foster daughter, Lorena was always soberly dressed. His eyes traveled down the backs of her slender gray-stockinged legs, revealed below a laceless white lawn petticoat.
“Gotcha!” Harve leaped forward, leant down over Lorena’s crouched form and seized her in an enveloping hug. His sturdy arms tightened round her waist and as Lorena straightened in shock, her buttocks collided with his hard thighs.
The startled shriek that rose in her throat was muffled before it was half out, as Harve spun her around and his laughing mouth closed down over her soft parted lips. But the noise was enough to attract Jane, the seeker, who was looking for someone to catch. Now Jane ran forward, her soft slippers making no sound on the grass, and pushed aside the hedge and peered through.
She might not have seen them, though she would certainly have heard Lorena panting as she fought valiantly to be free of Harve, had not a candle been at that moment brought into the side of the house toward them. Its sudden light picked out the slender gray-clad girl struggling in the arms of big Harve.
Jane drew in her breath, and her shriek as she crashed through the hedge and pounced on them both was one of anger and dismay. Harve was hers! How dare this little snippet from the vicarage entice him? She twined both her hands in Harve’s shoulder-length brown hair and gave a yank. Harve’s lips left Lorena’s with a howl as his head was jerked viciously back.
At the noise, the casements nearby swung open and an arm holding a candle in a dishlike holder, followed by a gray head, poked out.
“You there! Why, ’tis Harve!” cried his mother. “What are you doing there, Harve, fighting with those two girls?”
“He wasn’t fighting with us, Mistress Meadows,” cried Jane in a passion. “He was kissing one, and I’m trying to pull him off.”
With his stern-eyed mother beaming a candle at him, Harve did not have to be pulled off. He let Lorena go as if she were a hot poker and assumed an innocent expression. “We were but playing, Ma.”
“Playing?” cried a voice from behind Mistress Meadows, and another head—this one with a cap on askew—was thrust forward through the window. Harve winced. It was their neighbor, Goody Kettle, who was the biggest gossip in the village and frequently advised his father to “thrash him.”
Lorena, flushed and trying to adjust her disordered hair, gave Goody Kettle a rebellious look. “We were but playing hide-and-seek,” she said resentfully.
“Why, ’tis Lorena Frankford from the vicarage!” shrilled Goody Kettle, scandalized. “Wait till the vicar hears about this!”
Lorena sighed. She was sure Goody Kettle would make haste to tell him. And then she’d be on bread and water again, or forced to stand on a stool in the corner facing the wall for hours. “I have to get home,” she muttered.
“I would think so!” Goody Kettle’s strident voice followed her as she moved away from them through the hedge. “I will tell you, Mercy Meadows, that child is as wild as her mother. I wouldn’t have a son of mine ...”
Lorena didn’t hear the rest, for she was running to retrieve her basket and race home before anything else untoward happened. But she could guess what Goody Kettle might be saying, for she was well aware of her wild heritage. It was impossible to live in Twainmere and not be aware of it.
Her beautiful mother, Lenore Frankford, had been, they said, the wildest girl ever to grow up in Twainmere. With her flaming red-gold hair and violet eyes and vivid smile, she could have taken her pick of Twainmere’s ardent swains.
But Lenore was a flirt and had found herself a playboy, Jamie Maclver, who’d had no mind for marriage. Oh, they had called it a marriage, those two, when they lived together in his sister Flora’s house, but the town knew different. They had called it living in sin.
And Lorena had been the result.
Jamie might have made an honest woman of Lenore, the more charitable insisted, might have taken her to the kirk at that point for a wedding and a christening on the same day, had he not died in the battle of Worcester—fighting on the wrong side from the villagers’ point of view, for Scottish Jamie had taken up arms on the side of the king. But they’d let that pass now, for King Charles was back firmly on his throne again and that long rebellion had been put down. But Jamie’s death had caused Lenore to flee the victorious rebels’ wrath, and many were the wild stories told of what she’d done while on the run. She had come back to Twainmere with her babe in her arms, and except for the sooty lashes inherited from her young mother, the child Lorena had had the young Scot’s coloring exactly.
Flora, Jamie’s sister, now married to Robert Medlow, the vicar, had taken in Lenore and her child. And when the law closed in, Lenore had fled, leaving Lorena with Flora.
Lenore Frankford’s daughter growing up in the vicarage! Twainmere expected the worst.
As she neared the vicarage, Lorena—busy adjusting her bodice—could hear angry voices raised. This was not unusual, for Aunt Flora was a hot-tempered Scot and Uncle Robbie a most determined vicar. Usually the quarrels were about her.
Lorena flung open the front gate that breached the low stone wall and paused—but not to drink in the overpowering sweetness of the last of the roses that cascaded over the wall. She frowned thoughtfully. The voices were much louder than usual. Plainly a stormy scene was in progress in the dining room.
Cautiously Lorena turned and moved past the clipped boxwood into the rose garden, where again her senses were assaulted with the sweetness of the late-blooming flowers. She pushed aside a branching rose, winced as a thorn tore at her hand, and peered through a mullioned window into the dimly lit room.
